Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Last evening, the Town Council Budget Committee held a meeting at which a budget recommendation was made for presentation to the full Town Council for consideration. The recommendation reduces the Board of Education and Town Manager’s Budget Recommendation by $214,485. However, the indication from the Town Council was that the money could be reduced from the Medical Benefits account and therefore not further impact staffing or program. The Town Council will be meeting tomorrow evening, April 9th at 7:00 pm to vote on the budget.

The ultimate decisions regarding the final budget for our schools will be made by the Board of Education. I anticipate that they will set up a series of meetings beginning in late April and into May to discuss the changes that will be required to meet the 2009/10 funding level. I will be available to meet with any interested staff to update you on my thoughts regarding those changes on Tuesday, April 21st at 4:00 in the Highland Elementary School cafeteria.

It'll be interesting to see if the majority manages to get five members to attend. With regard to two members of the majority, I can count the total number of minutes they attended budget workshops on one hand. But what's the difference? We all know that the participation of Council members is discouraged anyway.

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

As is normal for the Democrats, rather than cutting spending, they would rather make a phoney budget based on one time savings or transferring money from reserve funds. They are unwilling to make the necessary hard choices that are really needed. This is the Democrat's election budget and it is designed to fool the taxpayers into not worrying.

The term of smoke and mirrors really applies to the Democrat'sbudget. They claim no change in mill rate, but avoid reminding you that the grand list is up close to 10% because of a flawed reassessment and the business reassessments are even higher.

The Dems just are not willing to take on the powerful teacher's union and start telling them that the the taxpayers are fed up with a bloated education budget. It is time to tell the teachers to get real and that the world has changed and we're not going to take it anymore. It is time to fix the education system and to remove any impediments to the process.

We were told that taxes, for the average homeowner, this year would go up by $153 this year, but that was a while back and who knows what it is today.

If you don't like this year's increase that is based on Democrat's rigged budget, brace yourself for the next two years that will probably be over $500 for each year.

What is surprising is that the person who is supposed to represent the business community, Seldon Dill, prefers the Dem budget even though as it will make Cheshire even less competitive. So, the support for the bloated education budget will eventually reduce the commercial tax base, and you can see where they are heading us.

It would be nice to have someone good with numbers as head of the budget committee.

How can he withhold the info that those with smaller homes would get hit the hardest because of the new assesments, and those with the larger homes may have their taxes lowered?He let all those people speak last week before offering that information.

I'll be paying $182 more for my house taxes. The dems want to eliminate the bulky trash pickup, but the reps want to set up a few drop off days...gee, I wonder which idea would go over better with people like me paying $182 or more in taxes.The dems want to use reserves to offset expenses - the reps want to reduce spending. The expenses won't disappear the next year and eventually the reserves will run out. Gee, I wonder what is a better idea - to mask over the expenses or just reduce spending.That cue ball on the council has to go!

And as it was made clear (again) at tonight's budget meeting, Cheshire would be more in the "middle" of those 169 towns for per pupil spending if the boe included their debt service in their budget instead of in the town's side of the budget.

So at the very least, it is not realistic to keep throwing that "we're 142 out of 169" number around.

I don't know how the head of a Chamber can be a big supporter of a "Life Style" mall. Does he realize this will have a huge impact on most of the members of ther chamber.If I were in the chamber, I would ask for his resignation.